The objective of this project is to speed up the transition of the electricity system to be completely carbon-free in a cost-effective manner. Green energy transition highlights the need to switch to a sustainable real time emission-free electricity system. The effects of pricing, prices and consumption feedback, home energy reports including peer comparison, energy saving tips smart thermostats on energy conservation have already been explored in the literature. However, less is known how monetary and informational policies support flexible electricity consumption behaviour.
In this project we are analysing various means of influencing the inter-hours electricity consumption behavior of the residential sector through a large, randomized field experiment utilizing hard and soft policies. Consumption reaction can be based purely on prices (hard policy) or some other metric, such as information on current GHG emissions (soft policy). Previous large scale field experiments have not explored how information on emissions or peak time reminders or solidarity content work in supporting flexible and efficient consumption behaviour with consumers facing different pricing schemes: fixed prices (€/kWh) or hourly varying spot prices (€/kWh/h). In this project we are included these into the studied issues on our field experiment. We utilize both a rich microdata (obtained from the electric utilities and from the national registry databases) and data from randomized field experiment settings. These together give this research project a unique position to increase the current understanding of the consumer behavior pertinent to the energy transition.
Keywords: energy efficiency, climate, climate change, households, consumption flexibility, behavior change, random experiment, electricity, electricity market, wind power